Haunted
by drewbug
Summary: Bobby's haunted. (Missing scene from the Season 2 finale "A Person of Interest")


Haunted  
  
by Nicole Clevenger (February 2004)  
  
*  
  
Written for the thursday100plus challenge at LiveJournal.  
  
*  
  
His subconscious finds the sensation first, the soft rhythm of fingertips brushing skin. Sliding over his temple and into his hair, a continuous motion that tugs him gently out of sleep. Soothing, but like a memory of something that's never happened.  
  
For just a moment - balancing on the cusp of awake and asleep - Bobby's entire world is composed of this motion. Skin over skin, comfort wrapped warm in the safety of its repetition. His eyes come open slowly, almost reluctantly, and he blinks the world into focus.  
  
Nicole Wallace is sitting on the floor next to his couch.  
  
"You were talking in your sleep," she tells him.  
  
Bobby blinks again, licks his lips. His eyes slip along the flawless pale skin of the inside of her arm, up from her shoulder and into her elbow and out toward her wrist with its hand in his hair. A drowsy tumble and they fall back onto her face; she isn't smiling, and, with this calm expression taking the place of the usual smug, she almost looks like another person. Borrowed features settled on those of someone he's never met.  
  
But now she does smile, and the illusion shatters into tiny broken lines across the surface of her skin. When they reform again into something more coherent, her face is hardened back into the one which he knows so well. Quick glittering eyes set in the perfection of her practiced poise.   
  
With his head pillowed on the fold of his arm, they are almost exactly eye level. Her smile is only inches away.  
  
Her fingers stop moving; her hand hovers just out of sight above the side of his face. Her smile doesn't waver, but her red lips part for a hint of polished teeth.   
  
Bobby waits.  
  
Nicole waits.  
  
Now she laughs, and her hand falls to the floor beside her bare feet. "I've missed you," she says.   
  
He believes her. He still doesn't move.  
  
"Come on, Bobby. Be a good boy, and admit that you've missed me too."  
  
Her eyes are bright in the dim light. His eyes trace the line of her neck as it fades into the rise of her collarbone.   
  
He turns onto his back and stares up into the shadows of his ceiling.  
  
"Now now," she says, "you can tell me. You've been hoping I'd come back, haven't you?"  
  
He has tried to put her out of his mind, because it's as close as he can come to forgetting. While some of the colors might be painted in similar shades, this is not the same thing as missing her.  
  
"You can't escape me, Bobby." Her breath tickles the sensitive skin beside his ear. He can hear how much closer her smile has gotten; the heat of her mouth bridges the distance like a kiss. "I'm inside you now. Under your skin."  
  
He shakes his head, going mute to save on empty words. He is not tied to her. She means nothing to him.   
  
He feels lethargic. Drugged. The ceiling stretches ever farther away.  
  
Her hand comes up from off the floor, smoothing its way up his leg, his stomach, his chest. Her body follows after, flowing up onto the couch, onto his shape mapped out by her fingerprints. She crawls up him until her face floats above his and he has nowhere to look but her eyes. Nothing to breathe but her scent. Nothing to consider but the weight of her, skin separated from skin by a few ineffectual layers of fabric.  
  
"I know you," her eyes say to his.  
  
He tries to lift his arms to push her off of him, but his arms are unresponsive. Useless.  
  
Nicole laughs again, the sound of glass shards falling to a carpeted floor. "Do you imagine that that pert little partner of yours could ever understand you the way that I do?" Her eyes are amused. Mocking. An unhesitating hand slips its way between their bodies. "I'm not going away, Bobby..."   
  
*  
  
Bobby's eyes come open quickly. Disoriented, he blinks at the grey light filtering in through the blinds of his empty apartment.  
  
The blurry numbers on the VCR clock point out that it's nearly time to face another day; rubbing a hand over his face, he drags himself off the couch and staggers to his feet. Only a handful of hours since his body and mind gave in to the exhaustion of the day before, and his eyes are barely open as he stumbles along the familiar path to his bathroom.   
  
His thoughts are muddled, sticky with sleep. But as he moves reflexively through his morning routines, things begin to solidify in his unoccupied mind. Connie Matson, dead. Dan Croydon, dead. Missing anthrax possibly headed at this very moment toward unknown targets. Each one carries a weight all its own.  
  
He's brushing his teeth by the time the dream starts to work its way back to him; Bobby freezes, the smell of her mingling with the mint of the toothpaste. Methodically he spits, rinses the brush, puts everything back into the medicine cabinet. He carefully closes the mirrored door, avoiding his own reflection.  
  
It's been a long time since he last dreamed of Nicole - or at least as far as he remembers - and he wonders why it's happening again now. Though perhaps it's not such a stretch, what with his glaring misjudgment of the current situation. But does this mean she'll be returning to haunt him every time he makes a mistake?  
  
His hands tighten their grip on the lip of the sink. He can't be constantly looking for her over his shoulder.  
  
(I'm not going away, Bobby.)  
  
His knuckles are as white as the porcelain between his fingers.  
  
(You can't escape me, Bobby.)  
  
Pieces begin to click into place. The unfinished puzzle starts to suggest a complete picture.   
  
He tells himself it was nothing but a dream, his subconscious toying with events from his waking world. He tells himself that she is out of his life, only a ghostly outline filled in with pieces of himself. He tells himself that he can't actually smell her perfume. Can't feel her hands on him. Can't hear her laughing like an echo in the other room.  
  
His eyes flick up to meet the ones in the mirror, and the memory of her smile flashes across the glass. This time around his arms can move just fine, and his already bruised fist slams hard against the unyielding wall.   
  
end 


End file.
